Standards Raised, More Students Fail Tests

Published: July 28, 2010

Applying new, tougher standards, state education officials said Wednesday that more than half of public school students in New York City failed their English exams this year, and 54 percent of them passed in math.

Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times

The results were in stark contrast to successes that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had heralded in recent years. When he ran for re-election in 2009, he boasted of state test scores that showed two-thirds of city students were passing English and 82 percent were passing math.

But state education officials said that performance was misleading because those scores were inflated by tests that had become easier to pass. The scores released on Wednesday were the first attempt to establish what the officials considered a more trustworthy measure of students’ abilities.

Merryl H. Tisch, the chancellor of the State Board of Regents, said she had encouraged teachers and parents to greet the news “not with disappointment and not with anger.”

“Now that we are facing the hard truth that not all of the gains were as advertised, we have to take a look at what we can do differently,” she said. “These results will finally provide real, unimpeachable evidence to be used for accountability.”

The falloff in passing rates occurred statewide. This year, 61 percent of state students were deemed passing, or at grade level, in math, compared with 86 percent last year. Students also performed dismally on the English tests, with 53 percent passing, down from 77 percent.

The scoring adjustment could raise questions about the precision of educational testing, even as policy makers across the country, including President Obama, are relying on tests to determine teachers’ pay and whether a school should be shut. In New York City, scores on state tests have been used to assign grades A through F to each school, as well as to determine principal and teacher bonuses.

And the results could cast doubts on the city’s improvements over the past several years; both the mayor and the schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, have used increases in state test scores as evidence that schools have improved.

“It certainly complicates the Bloomberg administration message, because the state test is completely unreliable,” said Michael J. Petrilli, a researcher with the Fordham Institute, a Washington-based research group.

New York State said the tests had become too easy, with some questions varying little from year to year, making it simple for teachers to prepare students because each test is made publicly available after it is given. So this year, the state made the questions less predictable and raised the number of correct answers needed to pass the tests, which are given to every student from the third through the eighth grades.

Last year, for example, a fourth grader had to get 37 out of 70 possible points on the math test to reach Level 3 (out of 4), or grade level. This year, a fourth grader needed to earn 51 out of 70 points to reach that level.

New York City officials said that if previous scores were adjusted to the new standards, the city would still show substantial progress over the past decade, and they noted that students had improved somewhat on federal tests in recent years.

“This doesn’t mean the kids did any worse — quite the contrary,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. “What this is simply saying is that we’ve redefined what our objectives are for the kids.”

“Whether the new expectations will instigate all of us to try harder,” he added, “one can only hope.”

By last year’s standard of proficiency, students in New York City did improve slightly in math this year, but dropped a bit in English.

The mayor’s explanation is likely to offer little consolation to teachers and parents of students who once were considered proficient and now are deemed behind. Scores for districts and schools were released on Wednesday, with student scores available for parents next month.

The Bloomberg administration has relied on the exams to carry out one of its most contentious policies: requiring every student who scores at Level 1, the lowest, to attend summer school and pass a retest or repeat the grade.

This year, anticipating a drop in passing rates, the city sent more struggling students, about 27,000, to summer school. But the test results indicated that about 8,500 more should have been enrolled, the mayor said.